This column goes out to God.

Thanks, God, for your patience, and also for your wisdom. There I was trolling around the Internets looking for something fun to fall asleep to when your loving hand guided me to YouTube, where I found -- in its entirety, no less, your honour (is that a what I call you?) -- A Thief in the Night.

I've wanted to see this film for decades. The funny thing is that A Thief in the Night must be one of the most widely viewed obscurities on the planet. If you were raised inside any hardcore church community in the '70s or '80s, you saw it, and probably its three sequels, too.

Being raised by hardcore agnostics in the wrong part of the world, these kooky Christian movies from Des Moines, Iowa were things that I only ever read about, existing well out of reach on the furthest rings of trash cinema. Naturally, Mark IV Pictures and its podunk series of Rapture flicks couldn't have seemed more thrillingly alien to some wise-ass kid in the North of England, or more ripe for cheap laughs. And now that I've actually seen one of them, the first, from 1972, I can report that thrillingly alien and ripe for cheap laughs blare from A Thief in the Night like the seven trumpets of Revelation.

But I couldn't get it up to really take the piss out of this film, even with a twist ending so stupid that I'm still not entirely sure it actually happened. A Thief in the Night might be awful, but at least it's fascinatingly awful, with a provincial, amateur-hour otherwordliness so total that you can't look away. And that's honestly more than I can say for anything James Cameron has ever made.

It's quite endearing, in the end. And much less cynical than its post-millennial, whiz-bang update, Left Behind. Plus, the people who made A Thief in the Night were serious about their Tribulation opera. They really meant it, so who am I to scoff? Especially as I struggle to ignore how much my world is starting to look like their cheesy set of prophecies.

On a less insane note, A Thief in the Night also hipped me to this song, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," by the pioneering Christian rocker Larry Norman. The version in the film is by the Fishmarket Combo, who look and sound like a high school band (jump to the 3:30 mark to see). It has an awesomeness all its own, but Norman's original is a beautiful little slice of baroque pop and exactly the kind of eschatology I can thoughtfully nod my head to.

I've seen Norman's name around. He has high profile fans like Black Francis of the Pixies, and he's controversial inside the closed world of Christian music. It's a world I've only ever had misguided contempt for. Why? It's not like I've listened or anything, and now here I am with a whole catalogue of records to explore by a guy who sounds like he could have been immaculately conceived by Harry Nilsson and Cat Stevens.

I couldn't be more excited, or chastened, and I'm even willing to concede that God really is great after all. Especially for three albums between the years of '72 and '75, according to Allmusic.